, taxes and the future of health care. nbc's steve handelsman has more. >> reporter: the pressure was on mitt romney who needed a turn around. president obama came into the debate ahead in every battleground state. with an estimated 60 million americans watching on tv, cable and the web, moderator jim leherer asked can you put more people to work? >> the answer is, yes, we can help. >> reporter: romney would cut taxes and regulations on small business. >> my priority is jobs, and so what i do is i bring down the tax rates. >> governor romney's proposal that he's been promoting for 18 months calls for a $5 trillion tax cut. >> reporter: which the president claimed would help the rich at others' expense. >> the average middle class family with young children would pay $2,000 more. >> everything he said about my tax plan is not accurate. >> it is not possible to come up with enough tax cuts to avoid either raising the deficit or burdening the middle class. it's math. it's arithmetic. >> reporter: on medicare and social security one agreement. >> neither the president nor i are propos

, taxes and the future of health care. nbc's tracie potts is in denver for us. she has a preview. good morning to you, tracie. >> reporter: lynn, good morning. the pressure was on for romney to perform, to back up his ideas with details, taking on the man that even republicans called one of the most skilled debaters in modern politics. the point of this debate was to make differences clear on lowering the debt. >> you said you'd cut the deficit in half. it's four years later, we still have trillion-dollar deficit. >> the way we do is for additional cut, we ask for a dollar of additional revenue, paid for, as i indicated earlier, by asking those of us who have done very well in this country to contribute a little bit more to reduce the deficit. >> reporter: the president insisted romney would spend $5 trillion on tax breaks favoring the wealthy. >> math, common sense and our history shows us that's not a recipe for job growth. >> everything he just said about my tax plan is inaccurate. >> reporter: they clashed on wall street, whether banks should be too big to fail, and medicare. >> cu

over the so-called fiscal cliff in january, it will cost almost 90% of americans more in taxes for a total of $536 billion. taxes for a typical middle income family making 40 to $64,000 a year could go up by $2,000. >>> in california, governor jerry brown signed a bill that would allow half a million young illegal immigrants who qualify for the federal work permit program to obtain driver's licenses. >>> near hong kong at least 36 people were killed when a boat filled with holiday party goers collidewide a ferry and sank. it is the deadliest accident there in years. >>> a house in clam mouth falls, oregon, that was sold this summer turned out to be a meth lab. it had toxic chemicals 80 times. the family who bought the foreclosed house from the government got sick and now has few options. >>> the white house is lit up in pink to mark october as breast cancer awareness month. new york's empire state building is also bathed in pink. and even buckingham palace in london has gone pink to support the breast cancer awareness campaign >>> and now here's an early look at how wall street

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